


rest stop

by FunAndWhimsy



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Future Fic, Gender-Neutral Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Happy Ending, Kid Fic, Multi, Nonbinary Pidge | Katie Holt, OT3, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-25
Updated: 2018-09-25
Packaged: 2019-07-17 08:28:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16091840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FunAndWhimsy/pseuds/FunAndWhimsy
Summary: Shiro practices letting himself indulge by staying in bed for another half hour or so while he catches up on the news, and later if he needs a little boost he'll tell Pidge and Keith about it like it's a real achievement, and they'll make their sweet sincere proud faces at him like it's a real achievement, and depending on his mood Shiro might actually start to believe them. It's a pretty good system, all things considered.





	rest stop

**Author's Note:**

> Set roughly 5 years after the paladins returned to Earth in s7.

Keith's been home for two weeks, now, long enough when Shiro wakes up to an empty bed and a quiet house he doesn't immediately feel the need to kick himself for sleeping in past rushed breakfasts and good morning kisses. Sleeping in is one of those indulgences he's supposed to cut himself slack for, something small that doesn't hurt or inconvenience anybody. He's still bad at it, still can't always fight off the sense he should have been making himself useful somewhere, but he's trying. Always trying.

There's a note propped against the baby monitor in Pidge's hasty scrawl, _took Kaz to work, love you_ , unnecessary but appreciated. When Keith's home, Kaz goes where he goes. At least it's a Wednesday, so Shiro has plans, won't get that awkward kind of lonely he gets in the afternoons sometimes when it's just him and the dogs. 

Shiro practices letting himself indulge by staying in bed for another half hour or so while he catches up on the news, and later if he needs a little boost he'll tell Pidge and Keith about it like it's a real achievement, and they'll make their sweet sincere proud faces at him like it's a real achievement, and depending on his mood Shiro might actually start to believe them. It's a pretty good system, all things considered.

When Shiro eventually rolls out of bed in search of breakfast, the dogs get underfoot the way only half-magic teleporting half-wolves can. At least Bae Bae has the decency to stay in his bed, like the distinguished old gentleman he likes to pretend he is, like it didn't take Shiro a year to find a trash can he couldn't get into and devour everything inside. Kosmo, the nearly ageless and nearly un-neuter-able asshole that he is, boofs around trying to herd his army of children, and he's, as always, the one Shiro's in real danger of tripping over. But Shiro makes it to the kitchen without bruising or breaking anything, and as soon as he's laid down an absurd mountain of food the dogs couldn't possibly give less of a shit about him. Keith and Pidge left the cereal out so Shiro doesn't bother with anything more complicated than a mixing bowl's worth with a banana on top. There are so many good breakfast pastries he fixed and stuffed the freezer with, but...cereal.

Shiro's email is a well-meaning mess, as usual. He spends half an hour redirecting requests for interviews to people whose work is more relevant, the people he knows who don't mind being in the spotlight either because they like it or because they'll grin and bear it for funding. The requests keep dwindling; soon he might actually succeed at fading into obscurity. Sweet, sweet obscurity. They let a crew in the house not long before Kaz was born, let them dig in and document and fish around for whatever might be interesting about the domestic life of three paladin, and it seemed to satisfy the parts of the universe clamoring for word of the men and women who saved them however many years ago. Now it's just people who don't think it's too early for retrospectives.

That dealt with he goes through the handful of things that actually need his attention, bits and pieces from Sam or Iverson that could use a fresh pair of eyes, a request for advice she doesn't need from Veronica that he answers with everything she'd already come up with for herself, a list of half-assed schemes for Pidge's birthday next month from Matt. By the time he finishes compiling a thorough list of things that can not and should not and will not fit in the house, the morning's pretty much gone, and if he'd rather walk than drive it's time to get dressed and head out.

Putting on his shoes is, as always, a mistake; the dogs go fucking wild, like there isn't a massive yard they chase each other around in all day wearing themselves out, like a walk with Shiro is the only hope for exercise. He leashes up Comet, older and calmer than most of the rest, from the litter that taught them Kosmo could change sex at will, the last one left from those golden days when they still had friends who'd happily take a puppy off their hands. Comet's the only one left from his litter. Beep-Boop (" _why_?" "it's my favorite kind of robot"), is still a baby, so the kids go crazy for him and there are always younger volunteers around who don't mind keeping an eye on him. And he can't boof, that's important. No accidental kidnappings for Shiro, not ever again.

West's Home is only a couple miles away, visible in the distance around the halfway point. It's bright yellow but otherwise a shitty dime-a-dozen pre-war mansion that managed to survive the Galra war mostly intact, the sort of place built to have a lot of square footage over any logic or reason or design sense. Shiro wouldn't have wanted to live there when the location scout found it, not even if he ignored the collapsed roof and bashed-in east wing, but it had so much space and went cheap, and it cleaned up pretty nice. By now it feels almost as much like home as his own significantly more modest house. 

As expected, one of the teenagers is volunteering today, and she snatches Beep-Boop's leash almost before Shiro walks in the door. She absconds with him to the second-floor, with vague promises to check when Shiro's leaving today and make sure to return the dog before then, unless today is the day she steals him of course, and Shiro shakes his head at Comet and heads through the solid double doors.

The door to the first room on the right is open; Shiro knocks on the frame and waits for Rowan to look up before he says, "hey, buddy."

Rowan doesn't greet him, just shrugs, like his eyes don't light up a little when he sees Shiro and the stuffed full backpack, or when Comet hops up onto the foot of his bed and falls asleep; one of those moods, then. Shiro doesn't blame him.

"New books?" he asks, when Shiro sets down his backpack and starts rifling through. "I finished all the old ones."

"I keep telling you," Shiro says, "if you'd work with the language tutor, you could trade with some of the other kids."

"I didn't like the way she looked at me," he says. Rowan's had kind of a bitch of a life so far and if Shiro's learned anything working with the kids here, it's that adults are really, really, really bad at handling that. He knows exactly the look, too, big sad eyes full of pity, well-meaning but just awful if you want a kid to focus on anything other than every bad thing that's happened to them. How do you get through Altean flash cards if the person holding them for you looks like they're going to start crying any minute?

"Fair enough," Shiro says, and passes Rowan a thick stack of books that might last him a week this time. Mostly Olkari kids' books this time, which aren't as engaging but take him longer because he insists on learning the language on his own. The heavy human fantasy novels will keep him happy and the kids' books will keep him occupied and maybe, if everything aligns just right, next week he'll be in a better mood. Shiro doesn't go back out into space anymore, but he'd send everyone he loves to the ends of the universe just for the times he comes in and Rowan's smiling.

Shiro sits, and they talk for a while, their weekly two-man book club, and he's barely made it out of the room afterwards when Rowan's twenty pages deep in one of his new books. Shiro tiptoes in and out of a few rooms whose occupants are asleep, leaving them the books or data chips full of music or whatever he's collected for them, and Comet trots along behind leaving his own gifts of dog hair and sometimes slobber. He sits for a while with the little Arusian - little even for an Arusian - girl with the big serious eyes who likes when he reads to her in Altean even though she doesn't understand it and Shiro still trips over words sometimes. He settles down in the common room for a while and plays checkers with a rotating cast of kids who are well enough to be up and about, finds out who's feeling restless stuck in the ward and might be ready to move elsewhere in the house, and he shoves the books he brought with no one specific in mind onto a too-crowded shelf in the little library. They'll need a third bookcase, soon. 

Evon, true to her word, comes to find him when it's almost time to go, Beep-Boop sound asleep in her arms. The rowdier kids always wear him out; Shiro's gotten used to walking home lugging forty pounds of dead weight. And it's good for getting less uncomfortable with people staring at him - a beefy dude carrying a sleeping dog with another dog trotting along behind gets a lot of stares, apparently.

Pidge's little car is in the driveway, and Shiro's barely gotten the door open before Keith's scooping Beep-Boop out of his arms with that goofy fond smile reserved for the dog and occasionally Pidge at three in the morning when they've stopped making sense but hasn't let it stop them from talking.

"Hi, Shiro, loving husband, welcome home," Shiro says, while Keith fully ignores him in favor of kissing Beep-Boop's forehead a couple dozen times and depositing him gently on the couch.

"Thanks, Keith, loving husband, for helping so I didn't have to keep trying to shove the door open with your dog's head," Keith says, flashes Shiro his eternally-devastating heartbreaker grin and stepping into his space.

"That, too," Shiro says, and lets Keith pull him down into a kiss. He tastes good, a little salty, a little spicy; he must have been making dinner. Except Shiro hears noises in the kitchen and Keith's out here. "Did you leave Pidge unsupervised?"

"Just to stir," Keith says, pulling away to go back to the kitchen, glancing behind to make sure Shiro follows him, like Shiro ever doesn't follow him. "Minimal risk of disaster."

"Fuck you," Pidge says, mildly, as Keith ducks in to take back over with the soup. He stops stirring almost immediately and covers it to simmer, which means he probably didn't actually ask Pidge to do anything. This is the problem - they get fidgety standing still too long when something's _happening_ on the stove, and start fiddling. Or...experimenting. Adding things. Creating general chaos. They cross the room to him and keep pushing forward once they've hit his chest, like they always do, like they're going to move him around the house or climb inside him.

"Hi," he says.

"Be nice to me," Pidge says, finally stops moving. "I had a long day."

"I'm always nice," Shiro says, gets his hands on their hips so he can sit them on the kitchen island. Better kissing height. Pidge always sighs, soft and easy to miss, when Shiro kisses them, like they've been waiting and waiting and can finally relax now that it's time. It just about killed him the first time he kissed them.

It's still pretty devastating.

Kaz is asleep in the rocker Sam made him, so Shiro doesn't bother with his normal routine of blowing off the adults in the house to cuddle his baby, at least not right away. Slow, easy making out with Pidge while soup simmers and Keith bustles around behind him and Bae Bae snores in front of his food bowl and Kaz makes little cooing sounds in his sleep, pretty good, pretty good.

"That's a way better kiss than I got," Keith says, and Pidge pulls away to stick their tongue out at him. He sticks his tongue out right back, and Pidge leans around Shiro to touch their tongues together, which shouldn't be gross because it's usually Shiro's favorite thing to watch, but it's certainly not an appealing way to start kissing. Cute that Keith met them halfway, though. A little.

Shiro's not actually sure when they'd say they got together, whether they think it was when he was gone and they apparently started hooking up to drive off the futility of trying to find something as small as one human in the vastness of space, or later, when they started showing up for breakfast with their fingers tangled together, napping on couches all tangled up in each other, kissing each other quick and a little embarrassed in the hangar before separating to take their zip lines. Either way there was always - they always seemed just a little bit sad. Each of them, and both of them, and Shiro spent a good long time pretending his jealousy was just concern, worry they might not be good for each other.

He's a little bit of an idiot, but at least they don't usually hold it against him.

"Hey," Keith says, close to his ear, snaps him out of it. "Soup's on, come back."

"I didn't go anywhere," Shiro says; it gets him matching snorts of disbelief from the two of them, which is fair. "Not far, anyway."

Keith kisses his cheek and turns to start dishing out dinner; Pidge squirms away so they can hop off the counter and feed the dogs. Shiro finally gives in and scoops Kaz up. He doesn't need both arms to eat, and he hasn't held his baby all day. Kaz blinks up at him with big, dark, solemn eyes; when he's old enough to figure out what sucker Shiro is his puppy eyes are going to be _dangerous_.

Pidge, as usual, doesn't get knocked to the ground and trampled when the dogs stampede for their food, and Keith serves up his soup in massive bowls - Shiro sort of forgot to eat lunch, he realizes now, as his stomach rumbles so loud they both laugh at him - and the two of them duck and weave around each other grabbing glasses and silverware and napkins, and Kaz is already asleep again cradled against Shiro's chest, and Shiro has to just stop for a second and breathe. One of those moments where everything aligns and life is as good as it gets and that's pretty fucking good, and if he doesn't stop to enjoy it he might not appreciate it enough.

It's slow going, still; the war's been over for a little more than five years, and he's still doing more managing the mess of his brain than moving forward. But even when he worries that he's not getting anywhere, he can take a deep breath, and look around, and not worry so much about it anymore, because where he is has Keith, and Pidge, and Kaz, and the dogs, and there's nowhere in the universe he'd rather be.

**Author's Note:**

> \- they have seven dogs; Keith always takes Kosmo with him when he travels  
> \- Pidge thinks it's the funniest thing in the world to tell people they don't know who their baby's father is. Matt is the literal only other person in the universe who agrees.  
> \- Keith can't sit still for too long so he's still a Blade and goes off on space adventures all the time but Coming Home is his favorite feeling  
> \- Pidge developed and works on terraforming technology to help planets recover; when they go to space it's to supervise projects and they'll be gone a month+ at a time, but they bring home the BEST books


End file.
